The Altered Nuclear Order in the Wake of the Russia-Ukraine War

Wither Nuclear Risk Reduction?

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Authors
Rebecca Davis Gibbons, Stephen Herzog, Wilfred Wan, and Doreen Horschig
Project
Promoting Dialogue on Arms Control and Disarmament
 

Wilfred Wan
 

Introduction

On January 3, 2022, the leaders of the five permanent members (P5) of the United Nations (UN) Security Council—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—issued a joint statement on “Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races.” Its release coincided with what would have been the opening week of the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), prior to a fourth postponement linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. The leaders of the P5, which are also the five NPT-recognized nuclear-weapon states, reaffirmed the importance of addressing nuclear threats, characterizing “reduction of strategic risks” as their “foremost responsibilities.”1

The rare show of unity among the leaders included a multilateralization of the 1985 declaration from U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”2 The statement also outlined potential steps forward in risk reduction. It expressed the leaders’ intent to strengthen national measures to address unauthorized or unintended nuclear use and committed them to seeking “diplomatic approaches to avoid military confrontations, strengthen stability and predictability, increase mutual understanding and confidence.”3 In this manner, the statement implicitly acknowledged the deteriorating strategic context and the elevated state of risk of nuclear weapon use.

Yet, potential for follow-up quickly dissipated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The P5 process stopped altogether. Implicit nuclear threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin and the ongoing “proxy war” between Russia and the West have heightened risk significantly.4 Shows of force on both sides, including large-scale military exercises and deployments involving nuclear bombers, feed into ongoing tension. In February 2023, Russia suspended its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last piece of the bilateral nuclear arms control architecture, and Moscow’s stationing of nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Belarus in June 2023 further raised the prospects of inadvertent escalation.5 The accession of Finland and potentially Sweden to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) underlines the increased significance of nuclear weapons on the European continent—and elsewhere.6 Is nuclear risk reduction dead?

This paper considers the question. The first section outlines risk reduction concepts and details challenges to operationalization, including in the current context. The second section makes the case for the potential of risk reduction in dark periods, revisiting its role during the Cold War and detailing the lens of strategic stability and deterrence through which it came into existence. It describes a spectrum of relevant measures. The third section reexamines these in the context of the war in Ukraine. It identifies the war’s impact on nuclear risk at large, then considers how the multilateral risk reduction endeavor has been affected. The last section provides a set of recommendations for revitalizing nuclear risk reduction. It suggests that the new challenges impacting the nuclear landscape—including technological developments and a more multilateral risk environment—might help facilitate modest steps forward.
 

 

Endnotes

Risk Reduction Concepts and Challenges

Risk is often defined as a function of probability and consequence.7 The last decade of discourse on nuclear weapons policy—and nuclear disarmament in particular—has arguably been defined by that equation.8 But the sense of urgency on addressing the probability side increased as geopolitical relations worsened and great-power competition returned. One symptom was the stagnation in stockpile reductions that had characterized the post–Cold War period. The arms control architecture between Russia and the United States was also slowly disassembled. Meanwhile, extensive modernization programs among all nuclear-armed powers, including those outside the NPT, expanded rather than diminished the role of nuclear weapons in security strategies. In this context, the importance of reverting to a fundamental principle, that of the undesirability of any nuclear weapon detonation event, took hold.

The simple objective of nuclear risk reduction explains both its appeal and its challenges. Reducing the probability of use encompasses a spectrum of activities, extending to the ultimate form of risk reduction: complete nuclear disarmament. Barring that, risk reduction includes any number of steps that can, inter alia, help address the possibility for miscalculation in crises, lessen the chance of accidental detonation, and improve the safety and security of nuclear weapon stockpiles.9 These steps can be political, strategic, operational, and technical in nature and be taken at national, bilateral, mini-, or multilateral levels. Many nonnuclear-weapon states have expressed understandable concern that the concept can be used to reinforce the nuclear status quo and delay disarmament indefinitely, as it suggests the existence of an “acceptable” level of risk.10 Still, reducing risk of use in strategic contexts in which the possibility of conflict among nuclear-armed and nuclear-allied states appears all too real has clear merit.

Consequently, risk reduction has permeated the agendas of numerous multilateral forums and initiatives. These include the UN Disarmament Commission and the Conference on Disarmament. Furthermore, the UN secretary-general in his 2018 Agenda for Disarmament underlined a need for “urgent pursuit and implementation” of concrete risk reduction measures.11 The Group of Seven (G7) identified measures to avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation.12 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum held workshops on the topic, which also featured prominently in the review cycle leading to the Tenth NPT Review Conference in 2022.13 The Review Conference’s draft final document, not adopted due to Russian objections over unrelated text, would have committed nuclear-weapon states to pursue a series of risk reduction steps, including intensification of regular dialogue on doctrines and issuance of declarations of restraint.14

The number of proposals for what nuclear-armed and other states can do to reduce the risk of nuclear weapon use is voluminous, as illustrated by a batch of working papers presented at the Tenth NPT Review Conference and by work in recent years from civil society.15 Still, translating the consensus in place about the value of reducing the risk of nuclear use to concrete policy action has proven challenging. The war in Ukraine will make it only more so, especially as it will reaffirm to some the idea of nuclear weapons as the “ultimate security guarantors”—with some corresponding level of risk a small price to pay for state survival.16 But moving forward on risk reduction would be difficult in any circumstance, for several fundamental reasons.
 

Risk Assessment Is Subjective
 

Different stakeholders perceive risk sources differently. This can be true even within states—for instance, between military personnel and diplomats—and is certainly the case when considering views across them, given different state ideologies and priorities. President Putin, for example, characterized the stationing of nonstrategic nuclear warheads in neighboring Belarus as “an element of deterrence” against Western aggression, justifying the move in part by pointing to long-standing U.S. nuclear-sharing practices in Europe: the original source of risk in his eyes.17 Yet what Putin sees (or at least portrays) as a move toward reestablishing deterrence stability has been received by the West as a clear and “irresponsible escalation [and] threat.”18
 

Risk Thresholds Are Variable
 

National and allied perspectives, priorities, and strategic cultures help determine not only how states and decision-makers identify sources of risk but weigh its acceptability and even desirability. For those in the West, Putin’s maneuver in Belarus is part of a deliberate pattern of weaponizing nuclear-related risk since the beginning of the war with an eye to preventing further Western involvement in Ukraine. This “nuclear coercion” has included purposeful threats of unprecedented consequences, a declared change to the alert status of Russian deterrent forces, and suspension of participation in New START, including its information-exchange provisions.19 And while not in the realm of nuclear weapons, the establishment of Russian troop defenses at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is, some suggest, a purposeful tactic to raise the specter of a radiological event. That the West has not sought to echo this rhetoric (or tactics) suggests a different risk calculus.
 

Risk Is Dependent on Context
 

Even acknowledging inherent subjectivities in risk assessment and tolerance, risk is linked to the nuclear characteristics and immediate security environment of states. The nuclear dimension of the war in Ukraine cannot be separated from the critical role of the country in Russian foreign policy or from what Russia perceives as Western (and NATO) encroachment and aggression in Eastern Europe since the 1990s.20 Reducing nuclear risk in this context requires an accounting of these aspects. Regional analysis of nuclear risk underscores that no one size fits all. This is exacerbated by the fact that risk is a moving target, subject to the unknown and yet to be determined impacts of certain technological developments, including in nuclear and nonnuclear capabilities.

All of these factors provide significant challenges to the political viability of individual risk reduction measures and, ultimately, to efforts to devise bespoke baskets of mutually reinforcing measures for relevant strategic relationships or security environments. At the same time, the severity of risk in the current context can contribute to shared concerns that drive practical cooperation. History suggests as much.
 

 

Endnotes

Risk Reduction in Practice

Engagement on risk reduction has distinctly bilateral origins, with the topic a “central preoccupation” for Cold War–era leaders.21 Unease in the Soviet Union and the United States about the possibility of inadvertent nuclear war took shape following the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis. In one episode during those infamous thirteen days, miscalculation and misunderstanding drove a Soviet submarine captain to order assembly of the onboard nuclear torpedo and consider nuclear use.22 The United States was unaware of nuclear torpedoes deployed onboard Soviet submarines, while Soviet submarines did not fully understand the U.S. Navy’s use of depth charges and hand grenades as signals to surface—the result was nearly catastrophic. The example is especially ominous given the backsliding in information exchange that has taken place because of the war in Ukraine.

Risk reduction activities pursued by the Soviet Union and the United States existed through the prism of nuclear deterrence. The two superpowers sought a notion of strategic stability in which the threat of retaliation and knowledge of unacceptable costs would create a situation wherein nuclear aggression was neither desirable nor possible on either side.23 In resolving the Cuban missile crisis, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev tacitly recognized the other’s hemispheric sphere of influence, agreeing privately to the verified removal of ballistic missiles (and bombers) from Cuba in exchange for U.S. withdrawal of similar systems from Turkey.24 The establishment of a secure Moscow-Washington hotline in 1963 underlined a desire to avoid repeating the brinksmanship and accompanying missteps that had resulted in near nuclear war.25 In the ensuing years, the United States and the Soviet Union took further action to restore and maintain deterrence and strategic stability. These efforts can provide a baseline for considering risk reduction after the events of February 24, 2022, and can be categorized as follows.
 

Mutual Recognition and Commitment
 

A prerequisite to risk reduction is mutual recognition of an unacceptable level of risk. The 1971 Soviet-U.S. Agreement on Measures to Reduce the Risk of Outbreak of Nuclear War elaborated concern about the possibility of situations spiraling out of control, with accompanying political commitments to minimize the likelihood of worst-case scenarios coming to bear.26 Similarly, the 1973 Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War stated the two nations’ mutual objective to “remove the danger of nuclear war and of the use of nuclear weapons.”27 Significantly, both the 1971 and 1973 agreements were inward oriented, centered on each side maintaining control over its own nuclear forces. This entailed in the 1971 agreement a pledge to take organizational and technical measures to guard against accidental or unauthorized incidents involving each nation’s nuclear weapons, as well as a commitment to notify the other side should these or other unexplained incidents take place. Notifications also extended to missile launches in the direction of the adversary, as well as the detection by missile warning systems of unidentified objects or signs of potential interference, syncing to a second, more relational category of activity.
 

Transparency, Information Exchange, and Behavioral Restraint
 

Improved communication can mitigate the possibility and effects of misunderstanding, misperception, or miscalculation. The Soviet Union and the United States agreed to facilitate broad transparency around military activities, promote restraint around those vectors, and outline procedures for notification, signaling, and inquiry—looking to prevent conventional confrontations that could otherwise escalate to the nuclear sphere. The 1972 agreement on the “Prevention of Incidents on and over the High Seas” (the IncSea accord) details naval restraint, use of informative signals, and notification exchange and presented a model for other European states in their bilateral relations with the Soviet Union (and later Russia). The 1989 Agreement on the Prevention of Dangerous Military Activities (DMA) outlines procedures for when the armed forces of the superpowers are operating in geographic proximity. These were precursors to a comprehensive agreement on conventional military transparency under the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe: the 1990 Vienna Document—from which Russia withdrew in March 2023.28 In the nuclear sphere, the Soviet Union and the United States in 1987 signed an agreement to establish nuclear risk reduction centers, which helped fulfill information exchange requirements outlined in arms control treaties.1
 

Restrictions in Capabilities
 

Deterrence stability centers on “maintaining strategic forces of sufficient size and composition that a first strike cannot reduce retaliation to a level acceptable to the aggressor.”2 Implicit is a requisite level of predictability and transparency about that capability. In the late 1960s, with the Soviet stockpile catching up to that of the United States, concerns about the destabilizing aspects of uninhibited arms racing helped to put arms control on the agenda.3 This was sparked by the development and deployment of new offensive and defensive systems that threatened to undermine deterrent capabilities while also instigating longer-term action-reaction dynamics. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which produced the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and Interim SALT Agreement and their 1979 follow-on, became the foundation for an architecture that included the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and its successors.4 Arms control would help to reduce the risk of war, the cost of preparing for war, and damage should war occur. In practice, the first objective—that is, “of reducing the risk of surprise nuclear attack”—“came to eclipse and overshadow the other two.”5 This is notable because arms control is too often discussed as a separate entity from risk reduction in the contemporary debate.
 

Strategic Dialogue
 

The Cold War arms control agreements marked the culmination of a long series of negotiations, conferences, and summits that fostered regular dialogue between the main Cold War adversaries on broader strategic concerns. These processes allowed the Soviet Union and the United States to sit and essentially outline parameters for strategic stability, including by discussing conceptualizations and definitions of strategic systems.34 As during the years-long SALT processes, subsequent rounds of talks would help narrow the scope of potential agreements, centering on ceilings for different systems and potential geographic limitations on deployment. While negotiators did not always come to common understandings on all aspects, these discussions constituted efforts to exchange and recognize each side’s perspectives, priorities, and concerns—the process being a risk reduction measure in its own right.
 

Beyond the Cold War
 

Risk reduction activities have not been limited to the prism of the Cold War deterrence relationship and the framing of strategic stability. Potential terrorist use of nuclear weapons became a concern for the international community in the post–Cold War era, as the collapse of the Soviet Union raised questions about stockpile and materials control. Calls for action intensified following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and then with the uncovering of the A.Q. Khan network in 2004, which revealed the wide reach of the nuclear black market.35 States seeking to address stockpile and material safety have done so with an eye to reducing the risk of unauthorized nuclear use. Still, prominent activities in this area—including the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, and the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement—suffered following the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea.

Nuclear risk reduction has also featured in relationships beyond those of the great powers. India and Pakistan signed an agreement on the topic in 2007, with each side pledging to enact national measures “to guard against accidents related to nuclear weapons under its control” while committing to notify the other should these take place, echoing the 1971 and 1973 U.S.-Soviet agreements.36 The measure also called on parties to make use of existing hotline links between their foreign secretaries and directors general of military operations. While restrictions on capabilities are conspicuously absent, the India-Pakistan relationship has produced other risk reduction measures. The 1988 Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities, which predates the nuclear weapons age in the region, includes an annual exchange of lists that promotes military restraint and transparency.37 The 1999 Lahore Declaration compelled each side to take steps to address accidental or unauthorized nuclear use, including through discussion of concepts and doctrines.38 It also drove ministerial and expert dialogue in the years that followed, leading to the 2005 Agreement on Pre-Notification of Flight Testing of Ballistic Missiles and, in 2006, bilateral nuclear doctrine consultations.39
 

 

Endnotes

The Post–February 24, 2022, Landscape

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent events have had profound implications across the nuclear landscape. This is not only because a nuclear weapon state violated the sovereignty of a nonnuclear-weapon state but also because, in doing so, Russia discarded the explicit security guarantees it (along with the United Kingdom and the United States) had offered to Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. The war has caused the recalibration of risk assessments in several states, with policymakers weighing the risks of relying on nuclear deterrence against perceived existential threats posed by adversarial nuclear powers in their backyards. Finland swiftly entered the nuclear umbrella provided by NATO, while Sweden seeks the same. Domestic debates have reignited in Japan and South Korea about the possibility of nuclear-sharing arrangements or, in the case of the latter, an indigenous nuclear weapons program.40 Effects on the global nuclear order are still to be determined.41

Further, the possibility of nuclear escalation between Russia and the West has been ever present since the beginning of the conflict. Purposeful maneuvers from both sides have raised the specter of use as a means to achieve specific objectives (Russia to deter deeper Western engagement, the West to deter further Russian aggression). This includes demonstration activity, including Russian operations near the borders of NATO-member Poland, changes on both sides in the flight patterns of nuclear-capable bombers, and the involvement of those bombers in military exercises as shows of force.42 President Putin and other senior Russian officials have made headlines with implicit threats of nuclear use, and Putin in February 2022 ordered Russian deterrent forces to be put on “special combat readiness”—though observers have found no indications that would suggest operational readiness of Russia’s nonstrategic nuclear weapons.43

Still, the prolongation of the Ukraine war—and the potential expansion of operations—poses escalation risks. This is especially the case with Finland joining NATO and Russia placing nuclear weapons in Belarus, actions that drastically expand the frontlines between Russia and the West. Some experts have presented scenarios in which Russia may feel pressure to carry through its nuclear threats if it continues to struggle in achieving its battlefield or deterrence objectives.44 In such circumstances, the West may feel equally compelled to take preemptive action. Fundamentally, the European security landscape is being reformulated, including in its nuclear aspects.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has thus compounded nuclear risk. Moreover, the chain of actions it set off has directly hindered the risk reduction agenda across all aforementioned categories of activity.

Nuclear saber-rattling by Russia has fractured the mutual recognition of risk and commitment to reducing it, exemplified by the January 2022 “Joint Statement of the Leaders of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States.” General recognition of nuclear risk might still exist at some level. The November 2022 “G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration” observed that “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.”45 Still, the possibility of practical bilateral or multilateral risk reduction activity is significantly hampered without the involvement of Russia, the state with the largest stockpile. The present conditions evoke the pause in multilateral engagement on nuclear security issues post-2014. Additionally concerning is that Putin’s rhetoric is part of a larger trend toward provocative language and threats involving nuclear weapons, including under U.S. President Donald Trump. The normalization of nuclear threats is antithetical to mutual recognition and commitments surrounding the unacceptability of risk. Notably, the TPNW explicitly bans use threats, and its First Meeting of States Parties in June 2022 agreed to “condemn unequivocally any and all nuclear threats, whether they be explicit or implicit.”46

While Russia and the United States implement limited confidence-building measures, there has been a general backsliding in transparency, information exchange, and behavioral restraint. Shortly after the war began, the two sides established a military communications link (a deconfliction line) to exchange information on military operations and avoid misunderstanding; this follows an on-the-ground precedent set during the Syrian Civil War. Both sides also initially continued to notify each other of planned intercontinental ballistic missile tests, in accordance with their New START obligations. However, as the war continued, Russia refused the U.S. request to restart on-site inspections linked to that treaty (inspections had been put on hold due to COVID-19) and in February 2023 ultimately suspended its participation in the agreement—pausing information exchange on stockpiles as well, though continuing to notify on launches of intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The United States, while engaging in some unilateral transparency attempts, has also taken countermeasures that include the withholding of its biannual data update on treaty-accountable facilities and forces.47

Even as Russia announced the New START suspension, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) clarified that it would continue to comply with the numerical limitations on warheads and delivery systems set by the treaty.48 Still, suspension of the treaty and the ongoing war in Ukraine provide clear obstacles to maintaining the arms control framework, with New START already the last agreement in place that sets verifiable limits on the size and composition of global nuclear arsenals. There will soon be no restrictions on capabilities. The United States has declared the resumption of inspections to be a prerequisite to discussions of a follow-on treaty.49 With scant movement in this direction—a Russian MFA spokesperson had previously called for the United States to create the conditions in 2023 for a meeting of the bilateral consultative commission (the body established to address New START compliance and implementation concerns)—the 2026 expiration date for the treaty looms.50

The Russia-U.S. bilateral strategic stability dialogue to establish a foundation for “future arms control and risk reduction measures” was paused by U.S. President Joseph Biden following the onset of the Ukraine war.51 Russia and the United States had established two interagency expert working groups—on “Principles and Objectives for Future Arms Control” and “Capabilities and Actions with Strategic Effects”—that still have not met.52 Officials from both states have suggested a willingness to delink the war in Ukraine from such discussions. President Biden, for instance, while calling for Russia to be held accountable for the war also underlined the need to “engage Russia on issues of strategic stability.”53 Some Russian officials, including President Putin, have said the same at times.54 Yet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also said that it is “impossible to discuss strategic stability” so long as the West seeks to destroy Russia.55 Little movement has been seen across all venues.

The Ukraine war will enhance risks and/or affect global efforts to combat nuclear risk in other ways too. Some nonnuclear-weapon states have responded by looking for firmer extended deterrence commitments from their allies, as in South Korea’s agreement with the United States in April 2023 on nuclear planning and patrols by U.S. ballistic missile–equipped submarines.56 How Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO impact their priorities, including on disarmament and risk reduction efforts (Sweden presently leads the Stockholm Initiative on Nuclear Disarmament), is yet to be determined. The war will also have implications in the context of nuclear security, a long-standing challenge in the Black Sea region. The possibility of nuclear smuggling and access to radiological materials by terrorist groups (and the potential for nuclear terrorism)—linked to issues of inadequate oversight, physical protection, accounting and control, theft, and corruption—is prominent in the region.57 The Ukraine war has made such challenges more acute while curbing the already limited cooperation between Russia and the United States on these issues.58
 

 

Endnotes

Recommendations to Take Risk Reduction Forward

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine effectively forestalled nuclear risk reduction efforts and revealed the fragility of the concept that underlines the essential role that all nuclear-armed states, but particularly the United States and Russia, have to play in advancing the endeavor. The war is also a blunt reminder that the geopolitical landscape that drove increased attention on the topic stands as a challenge to operationalizing it. And as the war carries on, it underlines the risk inherent in the continued reliance on deterrence logic. The possibility of nuclear use linked to the war remains ever present. Yet none of this should discourage risk reduction efforts in that context or elsewhere. As during the Cuban missile crisis, risk reduction is most essential when nuclear risk is at its highest. This section provides recommendations for the way ahead.
 

1. Expand the Approach
 

Multilateral dialogue on risk reduction has focused on the same types of activities that the superpowers saw as contributing to strategic stability during the Cold War. But the risk picture has become more complex. Notions of deterrence and strategic stability are more difficult to settle (let alone practice), with the presence of more nuclear-armed states than during the Cold War and the conventional capabilities and behaviors of a greater number of states potentially impacting on escalatory dynamics. The war in Ukraine underlines this. The doctrines, strategies, and postures of nuclear-armed states make clear that the character of deterrence is evolving rapidly. The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy and Nuclear Posture Review points to complicating escalation dynamics as “creating new challenges for strategic stability.”59 France and the United Kingdom in recent security documents similarly recognize the potential for a wider range of escalatory pathways.60 Simply put, there are more ways for deterrence to fail.

In decades past, the Soviet Union and the United States (and India and Pakistan too) recognized that developments outside the nuclear space could impact on the nuclear realm. Consequently, they looked to enhance broader military transparency. Adapting the principle to the contemporary landscape requires looking beyond the modalities that characterized those bilateral frameworks. A more expansive approach to dangerous military activity requires revisiting what it means for forces to “operate in proximity” given new domains of warfare, notably in cyberspace and in outer space. The increased presence of paramilitary forces on the battlefield, as in Ukraine, and greater reliance on nonnaval maritime law enforcement agencies in the East and South China Seas necessitate a reconsideration of how a force is defined.61 States could also look to adapt or expand mechanisms like the Russia-U.S. deconfliction hotline for other contexts. With inadvertent escalation a unifying concern on some level, risk reduction activities in this vein should be more multifaceted and multidomain.
 

2. Address Technological Concerns
 

The more complex nature of deterrence is largely tethered to technological advancements that encompass nonnuclear capabilities. These can undermine nuclear deterrence in several ways, including by threatening missile and space systems, targeting early warning and nuclear command, control, and communications, and effectively tracking nuclear forces.60 The deployment of systems like the U.S. W76-2 low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead or the Russian Poseidon uncrewed nuclear-capable underwater drone have fed into threat perceptions on both sides. Much has also been made of the potentially destabilizing impacts of hypersonic missiles or cyber operations. While these have featured in Ukraine with seemingly minimal impact, they reflect greater asymmetries in capabilities and an expanded battlefield. This can present fundamental challenges for traditional approaches that center on quantitative rather than qualitative strategies.63

Risk reduction efforts must key in on new modalities in pursuit of restraint, including normative and behavioral. This should not preclude redoubled efforts to resume New START implementation and to discuss a follow-on treaty. But stakeholders can plug into conversations elsewhere—for instance, by using the debate on critical infrastructure in cyberspace as a gateway to discussing nuclear escalation concerns. The initial 2023 U.S. declaration on military use of artificial intelligence includes a best practice on “maintaining human control and involvement for actions critical to informing and executing sovereign decisions concerning nuclear weapons employment”; however, this has been removed from more recent versions.64 Still, increased interest on the AI-nuclear nexus can inspire necessary discussions about which actions are considered critical or what control entails. Concurrently, states should extend existing nuclear-oriented instruments; for example, by updating commitments on avoiding nuclear war to include cyber scenarios, expanding missile launch notification systems to include space activities, or exchanging information on uncrewed assets. Connecting in both directions will prevent shifting deterrence and escalatory realities from outstripping thinking on nuclear risk reduction.
 

3. Ensure Inclusive Dialogue
 

Nuclear-armed states remain the key actors in risk reduction efforts, but an expanded pool of actors can also spark escalatory dynamics. Some nonnuclear-weapon states are investing in or developing ballistic missiles, submarine technologies, counterspace capabilities, cyber operations, and automated systems. Each of these has strategic implications, especially as many of the involved states are NATO members or under the extended deterrence umbrella of the United States. For instance, referencing a leaked intelligence document, a recent media report notes that the United States had assessed that China had developed capabilities to “hold key U.S. and Allied space assets at risk,” while elsewhere suggesting that China would likely “destroy ballistic missile early warning satellites” in a conflict with Taiwan.65 If nuclear-armed states are considering the capabilities and activities of nonnuclear-weapon states in use scenarios, nuclear risk reduction efforts must do so too.

Expanding the conversation can take different forms. The pre-February 2022 limited cross-grouping engagement between the P5, the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative, and the Stockholm Initiative states could be extended. The Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament initiative, especially valuable with the participation of India, Israel, and Pakistan, has working groups examining the twin topics of nuclear risk reduction and emerging technologies—albeit separately. Another way forward would be to formalize risk reduction on the NPT agenda in a main committee or working group. A comprehensive multilateral treatment of risk reduction would also be useful. A dedicated process—for example, a group of governmental experts, an open-ended working group, or an international conference—would have symbolic value and mark a definitive shift to an inclusive multilateral approach toward risk reduction. Moreover, states should take national action to engage the private sector and industry, especially as these parties are driving advancement across technological fields. This can lay a foundation for further cross-sectoral engagement.
 

4. Intensify Engagement with China
 

In recent years, the United States has clamored for China to engage in arms control negotiations, with the Trump and Biden administrations expressing concern about the pace and scale of China’s stockpile growth and its potential shift away from a policy of minimal nuclear deterrence.66 While China has denied claims of a significant buildup, it is critical that the state with the third-largest arsenal take a more prominent role in the risk reduction conversation. Its lack of involvement in a more operational framework is striking. In 2007, China established a direct hotline with the United States, and in 2017 it entered into bilateral memorandums of understanding regarding rules of behavior for air and maritime encounters while also agreeing to a joint strategic dialogue mechanism to improve military communication. Yet these are of a nonbinding and voluntary nature, and questions persist about their implementation.

China’s prioritization of its sovereignty and security cannot be expected to change. But China and the United States could explore means for crisis prevention in service of avoiding inadvertent escalation. This includes ensuring the upkeep of existing memorandums and using agreed-upon tools, such as reciprocal observations of military exercises and annual consultations. Existing texts can provide a foundation for developing new mechanisms. Chinese scholars have previously suggested elaboration of notification procedures.67 Such engagement can help chip away at the trust deficit in the bilateral relationship. Incorporating China into the risk reduction conversation should also extend beyond the United States and center on other configurations of states and topics. For instance, China joined the 2014 Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, which, while lacking legal status, constitutes a key maritime confidence- and security-building measure. Such a normative approach in domains of interest to China may pay dividends. The Arctic could provide a next, lower-stakes, locale. Notably, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States may want to reconsider the “responsible custodians of nuclear weapons” framing they introduced in a working paper at the Tenth NPT Review Conference.68
 

5. Strengthen Regional Perspectives
 

Intimately linked to the war in Ukraine but also important on its own merits, there is great value to considering issues of nuclear risk through regional and subregional frameworks. Experts have long acknowledged that regional crisis scenarios could spark military conflict and potential nuclear escalation.70 Among the great powers, Russia has reportedly warned the United States that it would be willing to use nuclear weapons in a war in the Baltics.71 The United States has elaborated its belief that China could use nuclear weapons to end a conflict in Taiwan.72 The United States continues to bolster its nuclear triad with an eye to strengthening regional deterrence.73 Existing regional institutional frameworks and alliances have a key role to play in bringing forward risk reduction by addressing destabilizing local factors. Australia and the Philippines have introduced the discussion to the ASEAN Regional Forum. Such venues can help to concretize nuclear risk reduction for nonnuclear-weapon states. The topic can foster useful exchange on regional security dilemmas and escalatory dynamics and can also launch practical action, with member states identifying points of contact on topics of concern, organizing focused workshops and tabletop exercises, and exchanging best practices. The nuclear risk reduction framing can help foster more systematic risk assessment, serving as a conduit to improve security contexts; it also follows in the footsteps of nuclear-weapon free zones, which have become a model for disseminating nonproliferation and disarmament norms.
 

6. Identify Benchmarks
 

Momentum on the topic of risk reduction can be easily blunted, as demonstrated since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. There is a real danger that the challenges to operationalizing risk reduction can reduce political support for the topic to background noise, consigning it to the dustbin of history. The responsibility rests with stakeholders to move toward clear benchmarks and timelines for implementation. While parallel tracks are necessary and will continue to exist, a cross-cutting discussion that coalesces on selected focal points can propel concrete action. This is true even in the current context. The NPT review process presents a natural starting point for promoting accountability. Indeed, the draft text circulated in the room during the last week of the Tenth Review Conference presented one means of measuring progress on risk reduction measures, centered on a standard national reporting mechanism and accessible repository first detailed in Action 21 of the 2010 NPT Review Conference final document.74 While parties did not adopt the document by consensus, in light of the “consensus minus one” that was achieved, four of the five NPT nuclear-weapon states could still look to carry this through. However, with the prominent nuclear-armed states outside the treaty, benchmarks will also need to be discussed elsewhere. A dedicated risk reduction forum could bolster such efforts.
 

 

Endnotes

Conclusion

Nuclear risk reduction should not be considered an alternative to traditional arms control, nor to nonproliferation and disarmament. Reducing the risk of nuclear weapon use is the foundational principle that underlies all the above, and a focus only on risk reduction at the expense of others will in the long run inhibit any movement toward a more secure world, one free of nuclear weapons. But with Russia’s war in Ukraine bringing renewed prominence to nuclear weapons and President Putin regularly invoking the specter of nuclear escalation, the promise of risk reduction as a pragmatic way forward appears even more significant. To fulfill that promise, policymakers and experts will need to take from and expand beyond the Cold War thinking that has heretofore characterized the discussion. In particular, they will need to untether risk reduction from bilateral notions of strategic stability and deterrence stability, notions that appear increasingly elusive and anachronistic.

In the short term, the most likely course for concrete, practical, and measurable action will come unilaterally or from like-minded states. Progress even on these fronts will be contingent on strategic relations. But, as with the origins of risk reduction, such actions can focus on maintaining control of nuclear forces and preventing accidents in light of new technologies and capabilities; for instance, centering on the greater role of automation and increased digitalization of nuclear systems. They can involve internal coordination with allies or regional groups on risk assessments and risk thresholds, allowing more effective and predictable signaling and reducing the likelihood of external misperception. To the degree that bilateral or multilateral engagement between adversarial states remains possible, avoiding inadvertent escalation can still constitute a driving force. But measures here will require greater creativity and cross-pollination to reflect today’s more complex world. Any degree of progress on these aspects can contribute to the kind of trust and confidence necessary to bolster the full range of risk reduction measures outlined in this paper.
 

 

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for feedback received on earlier drafts of this paper from Rebecca Davis Gibbons, Stephen Herzog, and Doreen Horschig, as well as the team at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and other reviewers. The opinions expressed in the paper are solely my own and do not reflect the views or positions of my employer.

Authors
Rebecca Davis Gibbons, Stephen Herzog, Wilfred Wan, and Doreen Horschig
Project
Promoting Dialogue on Arms Control and Disarmament
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